CF’s Ewers Center Transforms Into a Place for God’s Kingdom

John Dominic Crossan speaks to the audience about the Bible.

The College of Central Florida hosted a lecture at the Ewers Center on Saturday, January 31 about God’s Kingdom: Violent Revolt or Non-Violent Resistance by John Dominic Crossan. In this event, Crossan was able to inform the audience about his point of view as a Jewish Christian. Crossan is also a writer and was able to present and sell his books to the audience.

Crossan was born in Ireland and then moved to Chicago in 1950 where he was in the Roman Catholic monastic order as a Servite. In just seven years he became a priest and returned to Ireland to receive his doctorate in theology. Then Crossan went back to Chicago to resign from priesthood to be able to get married and then he became a member of the faculty at DePaul University of religious studies until 1995.

“I would be quite happy to be a Christian Jew or a Jewish Christian. l can’t understand Jesus at all, except within his own Judaism,” Crossan said. “I really would be incomprehensive so I’m deeply aware that to be a Christian is to be even in both sides.”

Crossan spoke to the audience about decoding the Bible. He asked the audience if they would play basketball without a hoop. He spoke about the Torah with emphasis on the word “covenant,” which means that Israel wanted to control the people that lived in the country. By using covenant in his everyday life he chose to resign from his priest duties.

“I think it was the second very good decision I made, the first one was to become a monk and a priest, the second one was to leave both,” Crossan said. “Because it was too much of a clash between being a theologian and a priest because in theology they base yourself on integrity is to say what you found and being a priest you have to obey your bishop.”

The three forms that the covenant spoke to the citizens of Israel was the past that protected you, the present was the law and to not rebel against or support someone that is against them. The future was the sanctions people received if you followed the law. You received blessings and if you disobeyed, you received bad things by the people that governed you.

Justin Johns, a Computer Science major, attended the event to write a reaction paper for his comparative religions class with Professor Richard Kirk.

“Dr. Crossan is an expert on religion in different areas,” Johns said. “There were 200 to 300 seats and 100 to 150 people attended the event.”

Katelyn Ray is also in a religion class at CF and attended the event where Crossan spoke about how David was to be heir and when it says “son” in the Bible, it means heir. “I thought he was funny, he had a good sense of humor,” Ray said. “If you don’t know what he was talking about, it was hard to understand.”